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Peter Talks Travel Insurance on The Early Show

CBS News — on August 17, 2009 10:29 am

CBS Early Show logoPeter appeared on The Early Show in CBS this morning, discussing the ins and outs of travel insurance.

In this economy, is it worth shelling out an extra 4 to 10 percent of your trip cost to cover unforeseen “what ifs” in travel?

Find out what you need to know about travel insurance …

First, Peter explained some types of travel insurance, scenarios in which it can come in handy, and when it’s worth spending your hard-earned travel dollars:

  • Basic flight insurance, which covers you if your plane crashes and you are killed or injured.
  • Trip cancellation and interruption insurance. More comprehensive plans can extend as far as covering for lost or delayed bags, reimbursement for hotel rooms and incidentals in case of a delayed flight, dealing with lost documents or forgotten medication, and even medical coverage. The value of this insurance goes up with the amount you’re spending on the trip.
  • Medical evacuation and repatriation – Beyond receiving medical treatment in your destination, which many traditional insurance plans cover, Peter highly recommends something called medical evacuation and repatriation insurance. That covers you if you get sick or injured and then flown to an appropriate hospital. But read the fine print, as some companies will transport you to a hospital based on the company’s discretion, while others allow you to decide where to go (even if it’s the hospital in your home town).

But these policies also come with all sorts of exclusions and other fine print.

Planning to go snowboarding? Traveling during a hurricane or hurricane season?

Do you know what questions to ask before you purchase a policy?

Check out the full transcript on CBS.

Check out more of Peter’s recent TV segments in our TV/Video section.

And for more information, check out our Travel Insurance section.

  • Anonymous

    Would you please help us by answering this question? We had a travel interrruption which resulted in costing us a great deal of money. Now the insurance is telling us because the air lines issued us two $250.00 coupons for any DIRECT flight from Tampa airport we have been reimbursed in total. We have no desire to go to the three direct flights on US Airways from Tampa. Do we have any recourse? Thanks your time. Gail & Lowell Holmes

  • Anonymous

    My bad experience witih travel insurance. Cruise ship. Hurricane Ike in Houston. I bought insurance before hurricane named. Houston devistated. No power. No transportation. My flight from CT to Houston the day before the cruise was not cancelled, however, no hotel available for an overnight stay and no next day transportation to Pasedana, the substitute port for Galveston. Insurance claim turned down because I could get to Houston the day before the cruise and the cruise did leave from an alternate port. Although the airport and the port were 42 miles without connecting transportation,, my insurance claim was turned down. No where to stay overnight. No way to get to the cruise. BBB andthe CA Insurance board were unable to help. CSA insurance is based in CA. I will never buy travel insurance again. Elaine

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    So let’s get on to a mortgage insurance discussion. Did I say mortgage insurance? Ah yes! Yes, it’s a unique name given to normal, ordinary life insurance, couched under a very nice sounding name – which makes a whole lot of difference to people wary of “life insurance.”